Lynn Ramage Schaefer was the IEP's first full-time teacher when the program began in 1992. She earned bachelor's degrees in journalism and English at Southern Methodist University and worked as a newspaper reporter before going to Niger, West Africa, as a Peace Corps Volunteer from 1984 to 1987. She taught English in a rural junior high school in Dogondoutchi, Niger, and also worked with other Peace Corps Volunteers and Nigerien teachers on a textbook publishing project, which was later published as the textbook series English for the Sahel by the French company Hatier. After Peace Corps, she got her master's in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Boston University. She has taught in the intensive English programs at BU and Harvard and in an adult education program for Hispanic immigrants before returning to Arkansas, her home state, to help set up UCA’s IEP. She served as director of the program for eight years but “retired” in 2008 to return to full-time teaching. Lynn regularly teaches courses in grammar, writing, reading, listening, and speaking. She is especially interested in vocabulary acquisition, using the Internet for listening practice, and the cross-cultural adjustment of international students. She speaks French and has studied Hausa, Spanish, and Japanese.